Sex Integration in Sport and Physical Culture

Promises and Pitfalls

Alex Channon, Katherine Dashper, Thomas Fletcher, Robert Lake

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351856799
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Scholars working in the academic field of sport studies have long debated the relationship between sport and gender. Modern sport forms, along with many related activities, have been shown to have historically supported ideals of male superiority, by largely excluding women and/or celebrating only men's athletic achievements. While the growth of women's sport throughout the 20th and 21st centuries has extinguished the notion of female frailty, revealing that women can embody athletic qualities previously thought exclusive to men, the continuation of sex segregation in many settings has left something of a discursive 'back door' through which ideals of male athletic superiority can escape unscathed, retaining their influence over wider cultural belief systems. However, sex-integrated sport potentially offers a radical departure from such beliefs, as it challenges us to reject assumptions of male superiority, entertaining very different visions of sex difference and gender relations to those typically constructed through traditional models of physical culture. This comprehensive collection offers a diverse range of international case studies that reaffirm the contemporary relevance of sex integration debates, and also articulate the possibility of sport acting as a legitimate space for political struggle, resistance and change.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

INTRODUCTION

The promises and pitfalls of sex integration in sport and physical culture

Scholars working in the academic field of sport studies have long debated the relationship between modern sport and gender (e.g. Hargreaves 1994; Hargreaves and Anderson 2014; Lenskyj 1986; Messner 2002). Within this body of work, modern sport forms – along with a great diversity of related activities, including dance, fitness training and physical education – have consistently been shown to carry meanings relative to the structures of gender prevailing in the wider social settings within which they take place, with patterns of participation and consumption clearly mapping onto gendered ideals. However, rather than simply mirroring such social norms, research suggests that many sporting practices were invented or have been purposefully developed in order to train young men and women in socially approved gender behaviours to begin with (Cahn 1994; Hargreaves 1994; Theberge 2000). Thus, much of contemporary physical culture finds its roots in the process which scholars describe as the ‘social construction of gender’; in other words, doing sports and other activities in gender-differentiated ways has long been a means of producing and maintaining difference in the lives of men and women, girls and boys.

Considering that such gender patterns are almost always implicated in structures of power (Lenskyj 1990; Roth and Basow 2004), then this purposeful division of the sexes becomes an important topic for scholars interested in the (re)production of inequality. For instance, feminist researchers have consistently argued that the institution of competitive sport has played a key role in symbolically validating male privilege (Messner 1988; Theberge 2000). Despite the fact that not all men enjoy participating in sports, the abilities of the male athlete nevertheless lend ideological support to the notion that ‘real’ men are brave, competitive, disciplined and physically strong – qualities highly valued and often associated with positions of power in wider social life. Concurrently, the exclusion of women from many high-profile sporting competitions throughout much of the twentieth century preserved sport as a symbolic space for celebrating men’s embodiment of these ‘masculine’ virtues, while the tendency to stigmatize and ridicule female athletes when they did enter the ‘male’ sporting arena helped prevent them from effectively challenging the legitimacy of men’s symbolic ownership of sport and its requisite qualities.¹

While this historical narrative of sport as a ‘male preserve’ (Dunning 1986) has appeared widely throughout the vast body of scholarship on gender and physical culture, so too has there been a consistent fascination with the possibility for challenging or subverting male privilege within these exact same sites where it is otherwise seen to be produced and maintained. Principally, these arguments arise from research on women’s participation in a range of sports and related activities. Here, there is compelling evidence of the potential for individual women to feel ‘empowered’ through the embodied experiences sport provides, as they learn to resist restrictive norms of femininity typically regulating the female body (e.g. Dowling 2000). Meanwhile, other work has argued for the possibility of wider cultural change driven by women’s sport, as the symbolic value of iconic female athletes challenges ideological beliefs about inherent male superiority (e.g. Heywood and Dworkin 2003). This argument typically suggests that if women’s and men’s sporting accomplishments are equally valued, and women recognized as being equally capable of embodying the highly prized qualities associated with (particularly) competitive sports, then perhaps their example might have a progressive, transformative impact on wider culture. In essence, such women overtly challenge the notion that it is only men who can be brave, competitive, or strong.²

By the second decade of the twenty-first century, physical cultural practices in many parts of the Western world have undergone significant changes compared to their historical forebears, undoubtedly shifting ideals of gender constructed within and through them in the process. With particular respect to competitive sports, male and female athletes attend major global sports events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games in almost equal numbers (Donnelly and Donnelly 2013); women increasingly participate in sports thought of as the most ‘masculine’ of all, including full-contact team games like rugby and ice hockey, or combat sports like boxing and mixed martial arts (Channon and Matthews 2015; Finkel 2014; Woodward 2014); and a host of elite-level female athletes such as Hailey Wickenheiser (ice hockey), Ronda Rousey (mixed martial arts) and Serena Williams (tennis) have become well known internationally. Yet in spite of women’s increasing prominence in these (and other) respects, their propensity to challenge traditional gender ideology remains stunted by the institutionalized segregation of men’s and women’s sport (McDonagh and Pappano 2008). If the growth of women’s sport has put the lie to ideals of female frailty (Dowling 2000) and revealed that women can indeed embody athletic qualities previously thought exclusive to men, then the continuation of sex segregation has left something of a discursive ‘back door’ through which ideals of male athletic superiority can escape unscathed, retaining their influence over wider cultural belief systems. While allowing for the admission that women can be strong, competitive, resilient, etc., the culture of segregated sport continues to insist that they will never be able to be these things in ways which compare favourably to men. In other words, men remain positioned as the superior sex group by virtue of their assumed prowess in essentially often hypothetical, mixed-sex sporting competitions.

In this context, sex-integrated sport potentially offers a radical departure from such beliefs. In its simplest form, the fundamental ‘promise’ of sex integration lies in the fact that it challenges us to reject a priori assumptions of male superiority and to entertain a very different vision of sex difference and gender relations to those typically constructed through traditional models of gendered physical culture. When women and men face each other as ostensible equals in athletic contests, when they train with one another in ways which are taken to be mutually beneficial, or when they must rely on one another’s athletic prowess for the sake of team success, the usual gendered logic stressing inevitable male predominance stands to be challenged. While sex integration in sport and physical cultural settings can take many forms, and not all of these are equally radical in their relationship to the normative gendered culture of sport, the possibilities that these practices present for challenging the traditional sexual hierarchies embedded within sporting practices make this a fascinating area of research for sport scholars.

The question of sex integration in physical education has been debated by physical educationists (in the UK) for some time, as changes in government policies regarding co-educational classes drove academic interest since at least the 1980s (e.g. Evans et al. 1987; Hills and Crosston 2012; Lines and Stidder 2003). Yet in relation to sports, relatively little attention has been paid to sex integration, and despite the prominence of gender research in sport sociology since the 1970s, research on sex integration in sports only began to gather pace from the mid-1990s (e.g. Henry and Comeaux 1999; Snyder and Ammons 1993). Today, such enquiry features as a more prominent aspect of scholarship on sport and gender, with research publications since the mid-2000s proliferating across various national and sporting contexts. With reference to a selected number of publications from this emerging body of work, we now briefly address what we perceive to be some central issues regarding both the promise and pitfalls of sex integration, before introducing the works comprising the rest of this collection.

‘The promise’: anti-sexism, hetero-sociality and wider inclusivity through sex-integrated sport

One of the most problematic aspects of sex segregation in sport is that it reinforces the incorrect notion that all men and women are categorically different from each other with respect to specific dimensions of athletic performance. Sex segregation occurs in most (adult) sports, regardless of the actual ability of individual participants, based on the belief that for most such sports, men are ‘naturally’, and thus inevitably, superior athletes to women.³ Yet the premise of sex-integrated sports challenges this belief, instead assuming a broad overlap between individual men and women in many dimensions of athletic ability. Thus, when men and women compete against each other on equal terms, as happens in equestrian sport at all levels (Dashper 2012a; de Haan Sotiriadou and Henry 2015, in this volume), it becomes apparent that specific aspects of athletic performance are not fundamentally rooted in sex difference. Moreover, when women demonstrate an ability to compete with, or even defeat male opposition in sports which are typically not integrated, they stimulate reflection on otherwise entrenched beliefs about bodily capabilities, potentially inviting challenges to the sexist assumptions that all women are always athletically inferior to all men (McDonagh and Pappano 2008; Wachs 2005). Further still, when men and women face each other in traditionally male-dominated and deeply masculinized contexts, such as combat sports (Channon 2014; Fields 2005; Maclean 2015, in this volume; McNaughton 2012), ideas that all women are ‘weak’ and in need of protection from men’s inevitably superior strength and power can be radically debunked. And if, as outlined above, we accept that notions of male athletic superiority often help underpin wider social constructions of male hegemony, then such challenges to these assumptions take on a clear symbolic importance (McDonagh and Pappano 2008).

Beside this political argument though, sex integration also has other benefits in relation to reworking gender relations within sport, principally regarding the establishment of positive, heterosocial relationships and greater inclusivity of non-binary people. Regarding this first point, Anderson’s (2008) study of mixed-sex cheerleading illustrated how integration had transformed certain men’s views of women’s athleticism, leading to greater respect for female ability and leadership, ultimately helping them to befriend women and view them in more humanized ways than during their participation in male-only sports teams. Maclean’s study of karate training revealed similar phenomena within mixed-sex clubs, wherein female karateka were accorded equal respect as their male counterparts (2015a; see also 2015b this volume). Indeed, some research showcased in this collection suggests that when men and women play together in a variety of team sports, as is the case in mixed-doubles tennis, korfball, floorball and quidditch (see Lake 2015; Gubby and Wellard 2015; Larneby, 2015 and Segrave 2015, respectively – all this volume), collaboration and teamwork can become more important than policing gender divisions and broadly help to establish positive, supportive, mutually respectful relationships between men and women.

Regarding the wider inclusivity embedded within sex-integrated sport, Dashper’s (2012b) study of the experiences of gay men within equestrian sport suggests that sex integration can reduce tension and make for a more welcoming and accepting environment for gay men than is often seen within other competitive sporting contexts. Meanwhile, sex-integrated sports may also provide spaces for those who are otherwise excluded by the binary sex classifications of ‘male’ and ‘female’ upon which almost all of modern sport is built – particularly intersex, transgender or otherwise non-binary individuals (Buzuvis 2011; see also NUS 2012). By not requiring people to classify themselves within one of only two distinct sex categories, integrated sports have the potential to offer inclusive spaces for such athletes. Debates over the possibility of such inclusion are evidenced by Tagg’s research on mixed netball (2012, 2014), Travers’ discussion of softball and baseball (2013; see also Travers and Deri 2011) and Pavlidis and Connor’s (2015) account of the controversies over inclusion policies in roller derby (in this volume).

‘The pitfalls’: resilient paternalism, male predominance and problematic implementation of sex-integrated sport

While sex integration has the potential to challenge some aspects of ‘gender injustice’ in sport (Travers 2008), it should not be considered a panacea to the deep-rooted patterns of gender inequality that characterize sport and sporting practices. Firstly, in many contexts, the potential for transformative experiences in sex-integrated sports is thwarted or at least slowed by the persistence of deep, historically rooted and often taken-for-granted practices which marginalize women, rationalize the ascendency of men into positions of authority and normalize the unspoken behavioural etiquette associated with the wider societal expectation that ‘boys don’t hit girls’ (Channon and Jennings 2013; Sailors 2015, in this volume; Snyder and Ammons 1993; Wachs 2002). Indeed, the reluctance of many men to engage meaningfully with women in mixed competition regularly sees the proposition framed as a ‘lose-lose’ situation, where defeating a woman is considered dishonourable while being defeated by one is emasculating (Guerandel and Mennesson 2007; McNaughton 2012). This notion rests on the continuing logic of male superiority in integrated spaces, which otherwise often manifests in different rules for men and women within matches – typically those which ‘handicap’ men and provide women an apparently necessary competitive advantage (e.g. Henry and Comeaux 1999). Thus, many aspects of how integrated sports are organized refuse the possibility that women might ever compete on a ‘level playing field’ with men. Even in those sports with a long history and widespread normalization of sex integration, behavioural norms that reinforce and support distinct gender roles – particularly those which centre on the paternalistic treatment of women by men – can be difficult to shift (e.g. Lake 2012).

Secondly, although outstanding female performances against male opposition might be thought of as potentially transformative, it is difficult to imagine that this might become a normal state of affairs across any and all integrated sports, especially at higher levels of competition. As the global talent pool for female athletes remains disproportionately shallow owing to the well-evidenced drop-out from sport of adolescent girls (e.g. Women’s Sports Foundation 2012); while would-be athletic girls suffer from a lack of role models due to the near-invisibility of women’s sport in the mainstream media (e.g. Cooky, Messner, and Hextrum 2013); and when the financial rewards for female athletes continue to be massively outstripped by those of their male counterparts (e.g. Women’s Sports Foundation 2015), we should hardly expect competitive performance gaps between elite men and women to shrink with the speed that scholars such as sociobiologist Dyer (1982) earlier predicted. Indeed, even in many sports where (human) strength and speed are not key contributors to athletic success, such as in equestrian sports, men still tend to dominate elite levels of competition and perform disproportionately well in comparison to their female peers, almost certainly owing to a range of social, economic and cultural factors embedded in contemporary sport (Dashper 2013).

Within cultural contexts wherein athletic performance differences are most often interpreted as the expression of innate, biological limits, instances of male success in mixed competition are very likely to shore up the ideological construction of men’s inev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction: The promises and pitfalls of sex integration in sport and physical culture
• PART 1: Theorizing sex integration in sport and physical culture
• PART 2: Integration in PE and youth sport
• PART 3: Integrated non-contact sports
• PART 4: Integrated contact sports
• Index